Parallels To The Tablets In Other Cultures

10.1163/ej.9789004163713.i-379.49

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Chapter Summary

Outside Greece, one can find documents with characteristics similar to those of the Orphic tablets. In some cases, they may be distant models; in others, influence may run in the opposite direction, or we may be dealing with parallel developments. The most ancient ones stem from Egypt, India, and Iran, while the most recent are found in Gallic area and, much later, in Western Europe. Various scholars have pointed out similarities between the gold tablets and the Book of the Dead, the fundamental repository of Egyptian beliefs about the Beyond. The theme of the Path to the heavens is already central to Vedic eschatology, and the funerary ritual is intended to set the soul in the right direction by helping it to get by the Path guardians: the two dogs of Yama, who accept whoever deserves a blessed destiny, rejecting anyone else.